Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food

How do we change the entire agriculture and food system? Insurance. Specifically, crop insurance.
Farmers who practise regenerative agriculture — cover crops, no-till, crop rotation — are less risky to insure. The problem is that the current US federal crop insurance system doesn’t recognise those practices. It’s backwards-looking by design, which means farmers can’t get insured for the practices that would reduce their risk, and without insurance, they can’t get their operating loans. The system has locked millions of acres into conventional agriculture not because farmers won’t change, but because the financial infrastructure prevents it.
That’s starting to change. The world’s largest insurance broker, Aon, used AI to review its own datasets and found an unmistakable signal: regenerative practices at the field level dramatically reduce insurance losses. The first real-world pilot — Michigan’s NextGen Crop Insurance programme — launched in 2026, pricing coverage using field-level soil health data for the first time. Tina Owens, who leads RALIC at TIFS, calls it the largest repricing of risk in seventy years.
Tina returns to the podcast after her 2023 episode, joined by James Cutler of DiversiFund, to walk through what’s happening, what it means for farmers, and why this could be the lever that moves regenerative agriculture from the margins to the mainstream.
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Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:
https://gen-re.land/
Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more here
Support the show
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In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
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The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed financial advisor or investment professional before making any financial decisions.
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Nicole Masters is a regen trainer and coach who has worked around the world with some of the most advanced regenerative farmers and agronomists. She’s the founder of Integrity Soils and The Learning Field, the author of For the Love of Soil, and is now writing her next book, Keystone.
“Humans are a plague.” It’s a line you hear often in climate and biodiversity circles, and given the damage we've done as a species, it’s hard to refute. Nicole has seen the other side: humans as a positive keystone species. When curious, respected farmers are trained and coached well, they transform more than their own land. They shift whole communities and landscapes, with soil carbon, productivity and biodiversity results most people wouldn’t believe without seeing them.
In this wide-ranging conversation, we explore what Nicole sees as the biggest hidden lever in regeneration: training and supporting these positive outliers. From a hole dug in a Nevada hay field to the “drift” that pulls us away from being present, it keeps coming back to people.
More about this episode.
Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!
Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:
https://gen-re.land/
Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more here
Support the show
=======
In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
👩🏻‍💻 VISIT OUR WEBSITE 
📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 
💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORK
Join Gumroad
Share it
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Buy us a coffee… or a meal! 
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The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed financial advisor or investment professional before making any financial decisions.
Feedback, ideas, suggestions? Get in touch!

Dave Oates is a seventh-generation farmer, on land in Cornwall his family has farmed for more than 250 years. When he first went to Groundswell five years ago, he thought the farm was 20 years behind. He left thinking it was 20 years ahead: they had been farming regeneratively all along, and now payment schemes, grant funding and technology are coming around to meet the way they already farm.
In this episode, we talk about what seven generations of farming teach about making it last. His rule is simple: if it doesn’t make money, don’t do it, because a farmer shouldn’t work twice as hard for half the money. There’s a life with room for family, and an alarm that still goes off at 4:45 every day. And there’s technology that lets a spread-out farm of small, mostly rented fields hold more complexity, not less.
It’s not all rainbows and sunshine: there’s a lot of time in the office on grants, trials and paperwork, and a constantly changing farm takes real managing. But it’s also a lot of fun, and David sees a huge opportunity ahead in farming as a source of health.

More about this episode.

This podcast is part of the AI 4 Soil Health project which aims to help farmers and policy makers by providing new tools powered by AI to monitor and predict soil health across Europe. For more information visit ai4soilhealth.eu.
Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!
Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:
https://gen-re.land/
Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more here
Support the show
=======
In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
👩🏻‍💻 VISIT OUR WEBSITE 
📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 
💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORK
Join Gumroad
Share it
Give a 5-star rating
Buy us a coffee… or a meal! 
=======
🎙 YouTube channel
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=======
The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed financial advisor or investment professional before making any financial decisions.
Feedback, ideas, suggestions? Get in touch!

Gonçalo Pereira Miguel is 24 years old and the first person in three generations of his family to return to their 700-hectare Montado farm in Portugal’s Alentejo. The farm had been degraded by decades of continuous grazing, treated as an inheritance rather than a business. In 2023, a severe drought made the damage impossible to ignore.
Two years after introducing 85 cows and a precision rotational grazing system, the results are striking: hay costs that once consumed half of a farm’s operating budget are nearly gone, calf mortality is zero, and species that had never been seen on the property — from perennial grasses to moles — are returning.
We recorded this conversation walking among the cattle on the farm, watching a paddock move happen in real time. We talk about the economics of the Montado, the surprising ease of managing cattle in a rotational system even as a first-generation farmer, the genetics of the Maronesa breed, and Gonçalo's dream: to eventually remove all fences between neighbouring farms and graze 8,500 hectares as a single regional herd.
This episode is part of the Role of Animals in food and agriculture systems of the future series, supported and co-produced by the Datamars Sustainability Foundation.

More about this episode.
Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!
Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:
https://gen-re.land/
Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more here
Support the show
=======
In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
👩🏻‍💻 VISIT OUR WEBSITE 
📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 
💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORK
Join Gumroad
Share it
Give a 5-star rating
Buy us a coffee… or a meal! 
=======
🎙 YouTube channel
🔗 Linkedin
📸 Instagram
Join our newsletter!
=======
The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed financial advisor or investment professional before making any financial decisions.
Feedback, ideas, suggestions? Get in touch!

Peter Herz spent his career as a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley deep tech: chips, semiconductors, data storage. Then a doctor's visit in 2010 changed everything. Today he is co-founder and general partner of 1st Course Capital, one of the best-performing food funds you've probably never heard of.
So what does a former chip designer invest in? Alt proteins, vertical farms, AI farm software? Not quite. The portfolio is half tech, half food brands, with no engineered foods. And the better-for-you food brands are outperforming the tech by a mile. So why is it still so hard to raise money for food while investors chase the next big shiny thing in AI?
In this episode, we talk about why engineering tools don’t always work on biology, what Peter learned from firing his doctor, why he’s sceptical of lab-grown meat, and how better food brands could be meeting a demand the market has underestimated.
Episode and shownotes on our website.
Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!
Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:
https://gen-re.land/
Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more here
Support the show
=======
In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
👩🏻‍💻 VISIT OUR WEBSITE 
📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 
💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORK
Join Gumroad
Share it
Give a 5-star rating
Buy us a coffee… or a meal! 
=======
🎙 YouTube channel
🔗 Linkedin
📸 Instagram
Join our newsletter!
=======
The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed financial advisor or investment professional before making any financial decisions.
Feedback, ideas, suggestions? Get in touch!